For Coda, Artist Hangs Himself

By

Kimberly Chou

November 4, 2011

It's Wednesday afternoon at the Guggenheim Museum, two days before the Maurizio Cattelan retrospective "All" opens to the public, and the least visibly stressed person in the building is Maurizio Cattelan.

Slim at 51, in tight black jeans and a red suit jacket, the artist runs up the museum's curving ramp, sliding across the floor in his shoes. Everyone else appears diligent and tense. Employees maneuver past retractable stanchions and temporary paper scrims obscuring some 130 objects of Mr. Cattelan's...